The present invention relates to a process for the production of hydroxylammonium nitrate. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improved process for the production of hydroxylammonium nitrate by combining the reactants in the presence of an organic solvent.
Hydroxylammonium nitrate solutions are traditionally made by the reaction of hydroxylammonium sulfate with barium nitrate solutions. The dilute hydroxylammonium nitrate solutions are removed from the by-product barium sulfate precipitate by decantation after settling. The precipitate is so fine that normal filtration and washing are practically impossible and settling is extremely slow, usually 8-16 hours. As several washes are required to recover the product, it can be realized that this is a slow process which is difficult to scale up commercially. The dilute hydroxylammonium nitrate solutions are then concentrated by removing the excess water with vacuum distillation. A further discussion of this process can be found in Proceedings of the Transactions of the Nova Scotia Institute of Science, 1902/1906 pages 95-115, "Contributions to the Study of Hydroxylamine and its Salts," by W. H. Ross.
Prior Art has revealed a number of other processes for producing hydroxylammonium nitrate including the catalytic hydrogenation of nitric acid; the catalytic reduction of nitrogen monoxide with hydrogen in an acid solution; and a process for converting hydroxylamine sulfate to hydroxylamine nitrate by passing an aqueous hydroxylamine sulfate solution through a cation exchange resin bed which absorbs the hydroxylamine, washing the sulfate ion from the resin bed and eluting the hydroxylamine nitrate with nitric acid. However, each of these methods appear to be complex, time consuming and relatively expensive in comparison to the method disclosed in the present invention.